Crosswalk.com aims to offer the most compelling biblically-based content to Christians on their walk with Jesus. Crosswalk.com is your online destination for all areas of Christian Living – faith, family, fun, and community. Each category is further divided into areas important to you and your Christian faith including Bible study, daily devotions, marriage, parenting, movie reviews, music, news, and more.

Later School Start Times May Foster Better Students

A new study mirrors
previous research results in finding that starting school later in the
morning allows high school students to get more sleep and increases
alertness in class...

High school students at a
private school in Rhode Island who started school a half-hour later in
the morning were in better moods, more alert, less depressed and more
likely to actually attend class than before the time change, a new study
shows.

In fact, the experiment was so successful that the school
has now permanently shifted its start time from 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

"At
the end of the experimental period, there was not a single faculty
member, student or administrator who wanted to go back to the old start
time," said Dr. Judith Owens, lead author of a paper appearing in the
July issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The
study bolsters the evidence that teens have special sleep needs.

"Sleep
medicine specialists have long known that delaying high school start
times helps teenagers sleep better," said Dr. Heidi V. Connolly, chief
of the division of pediatric sleep medicine at the University of
Rochester Medical Center in New York. "Teenagers are biologically
programmed to prefer a later bedtime and a later wake-up time so it is
not surprising that they struggle with early school start times."

After
the time change, students went to bed an average of 18 minutes later at
night and slept an average of 45 minutes longer. The proportion of
students getting at least eight hours of sleep a night jumped from 16.4
percent to 54.7 percent, while those getting less than seven hours a
night decreased by almost 80 percent.